


In the hall of the mountain king

by pratins



Series: season 15 inspired [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Benny Lafitte & Dean Winchester Friendship, Benny Lafitte Dies, Benny Lafitte Takes Care of Dean Winchester, Flashbacks, Gen, MCD but it’s canon, Post-Episode: s15e09 The Trap, Purgatory, Season 15, Season 8, Supportive Benny Lafitte
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:08:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22548304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pratins/pseuds/pratins
Summary: Benny is dead and all Dean can think about is how his friend's death is his fault. He keeps dreaming about his death, over and over, until he finds a way to remember his best friend in the best way he could.This is for you, Benny, thanks for always being by my side.
Relationships: Benny Lafitte & Dean Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: season 15 inspired [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1610134
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	In the hall of the mountain king

**Author's Note:**

> This is the second story of the series, but it’s not necessary to have read the first one. I want to thank my beta and friend trixxter for her job with revision and my friend drunkicarus for helping me with southern accent.
> 
> Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

> _“Slay him! The Christian man's son has seduced_   
>  _the fairest maid of the Mountain King!”_

The wood was covered in fog, as always. But that night, the atmosphere seemed to be darker and the air was colder. I could see Benny standing in front of me, but it seemed like he wasn’t able to notice me. He was nervous, pacing back and forth with a knife in his right hand.

“Benny!” I said, desperately trying to make him notice my presence. But it didn’t help, I was somehow invisible for him.

A sound. Steps. Benny heard them and started to look around. The steps seemed to get closer and closer, as if an entire horde of people was walking towards us. Vampires. I could see their eyes in the darkness, behind trees, in the bushes. They were all looking at Benny.

“Bonsoir,” Benny said, sure of himself, “to what I owe the pleasure?”

The vampires didn’t answer Benny’s question. Only one of them started walking slowly towards Benny. I couldn’t see him well, but he was a tall black man with a hint of stubble on his face.

“I heard you were back, LaFitte,” he said in a deep voice. “But now that I can see you myself, I wonder why you are.”

“I died.”

The man giggled, putting a hand in the pocket of his trousers. “I heard you were with the Winchesters too.”   
“Yeah, we mighta have spent some time together, they’re cool,” he said in a challenging tone of voice. Ironical and provoking as he always had been. The man’s eyes got serious, still looking at my friend.

“There’s no place for traitors here.”

I saw the vampires attacking him. I tried to move, to run, but I couldn’t. It was like I had my feet glued to the ground. When the alpha bit Benny’s arm, I started screaming, trying to make him hear me. I was able to see him, but I couldn’t help him and this was heartbreaking. The vampires were cutting and ripping his skin and I couldn’t do anything to save him.

He had always been a wise man, he knew that that was going to be his final show, so he braved them the best way he could. But when he fell onto the ground he just gave up, starting to whistle his favourite melody, trying not to focus on the pain.

The last thing they cut off from his body was his head.

* * *

I woke up shaking, covered in sweat. I sat up on the edge of the bed, laying my sweaty head on my hand. I glanced at the alarm, trying to figure out what time it was: 3.27 a.m. As much as I tried, I couldn’t cast Benny’s death from my mind. Although I didn’t see him dying, the Leviathan’s words were stuck in my head. What happened to him was my fault, I sent him back to Purgatory to help Sam when we were trying to close the gates of Hell. He was dead because of me.

I stood up and left the bedroom for the bunker’s kitchen. It was cold: Sam claimed that keeping the heating on during the night wasn’t good for health, so I had to wear a hoodie I found in my closet. Once in the kitchen, I opened the fridge and grabbed a beer. I opened it and I walked into the main room to sit in one of the comfortable armchairs in the room. I took a sip of beer with my eyes closed, drowning in my memories.

_Run. Eat. Find the angel. Survive. These were the only thoughts I had in my mind while I was making my way through the endless wood of Purgatory. Fog made everything in front of me a blur. To compensate, my hearing got sharper and I was able to tell if monsters were nearby. Vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters and leviathans were my enemies and I was alone in that terrifying Battle Royale. Trees were high and full of leaves, interwoven with one another, not letting the sun through. The air was heavy and moist because the forest was surrounded by a freshwater river, the shoreline of which was a landmark for the wood inhabitants._

_I could rarely have some rest: it wasn’t a great idea, I would have been vulnerable and easy to kill, but tiredness was killing me too. My knife was in my hand and other weapons I handcrafted with stones and bark, which I found in the wood, were hooked to my belt. I had a strong headache due to all the punches I had taken in the previous days. My face was dirty and marked with a lot of scars._

_I heard a noise: someone – or something – had stepped on a leaf, giving out a “crack” which resonated in the fog._

_He was fast. I chased him. He was a vampire for sure, I could say so for how fast he was running. But no monster can escape Dean Winchester. I had been in that awful place for weeks, desperately trying to find Castiel without any result, I was angry, very angry and I was taking it all out on monsters. The vampire stopped, confused and trying to understand where I was: right behind him. We didn’t fight long, Purgatory made me more brutal, in a few seconds I had already disarmed the vampire, pushing his back against a tree. He was breathing fast, probably scared._

_“Take a breath, calm down,” I said, pressing my knife against his adam’s apple, making him feel the cold blade on his skin._

_“Where’s the angel?” I asked threateningly, keeping my eyes on his. He smiled as a smartass does._   
_“You’re him, the human.”_   
_“Where’s the angel?” I repeated._   
_“I don’t know.”_

_With brutal strength I stabbed him in the forearm, lot of blood splashed on my hand. He roared, tilting his head back. I picked up his weapon from the ground: a huge knife made from polished stone bound to a thick branch. His head was no longer connected to the rest of his body. When he fell, his head still was on the blade. I didn’t get anything on Castiel, another monster was dead but I still was alone. It was frustrating._

_Then something attacked me, it disarmed me, making me fall and trying to bite my face off. I thought that was going to be the end of the game, but someone saved me._

I remember perfectly my first impression of Benny: I didn’t know if he was trust-worthy or not, but for some reason I felt like he was. No one talks about it, but love isn’t the only thing that can happen at first sight; friendship, trust and affection can grow on you at the same speed.

_“Why aren’t you drinking my blood already?” I asked while Benny and I were facing each other. The sun was about to disappear behind the trees, giving way to the darkness._

_“I don’t need your blood.” I looked at him and then I sat down, resting my back against a tree._

_“You shoulda sleep, you’re human, you must be exhausted.”_

_“How do I know you won’t kill me in my sleep?”_

_“I don’t know, but think ‘bout it, I need you to come back to Earth, what’s in it for me if I kill you?”_

_“Assuming you told me the truth.”_

_“Why should I lie?”_

_I didn’t answer his question, but I slowly laid down on the ground. A couple of seconds later, I was already dreaming. I dreamt about me finding Castiel, but it wasn’t a nice dream: Cas was trapped in a vampire’s nest and the monsters were torturing him. I tried to rescue him but they were too much, they stabbed me, bit me, until I slumped over to the ground, clinging to life. Then someone took me out. Benny, for the first time, appeared in one of my dreams._

_“Dean wake up!” He called me three times before I opened my eyes._   
_“Nightmare? You couldn’t lay still.”_   
_I looked at him and shook my head. “No, no, no nightmares.”_

_Benny nodded and I moved away from him, trying to find a place in where I could have been alone for a little bit. When I got there, I looked at the sky, there were no stars in it, or maybe the trees weren’t letting me see them. There were only darkness and silence above me. I looked around and then tilted my head back, closing my eyes._

_“Cas, I know you’re probably not listening but… I want to talk with you, like every night since we arrived here.” I took a deep breath. “Where are you? This vampire, Benny, knows a way out from here, we can go back to Earth, to Sam and leave this horrible place behind. Please Cas, I need you, I won’t come back home without you, I won’t leave you here. Please… come back.”_   
_My eyes were teary._

_“I don’t think you’ll get an answer from your sweet angel.” I heard Benny’s voice, he was around ten feet away from me. I didn’t turn my head, so he came closer to me._

_“Why do you care so much, Dean? He left you here, alone.”_

_“Something happened to him, I’m sure. He’d never left me alone,” I said, slowly coming back to the tree where I had fallen asleep._

_“How are you goin’ to find him?”_

_“Torturing those fucking monsters until they tell me where he is.”_   
_Benny didn’t say anything else and I thought about what I had just said._

_“I mean… no offence.”_

_Benny giggled._   
_“No offence, when the sun rises, we’ll go hunt some of those motherfuckers.”_   
_“Would you kill your own kind?”_

_“Why not? I’ve already done it, I killed the vampire that was goin’ to eat your human face for breakfast. We’re all enemies here.”_

_“Good. Let’s go,” I said, picking up the belt from the ground._   
_“Are you sure you’ve had enough rest, Winchester?”_

_“Yeah!” I nodded. “Hunters don’t need to sleep a lot.”_   
_Benny nodded, collecting his weapons._

_“Be careful, you’re a beacon for them.”_

Sometimes my anger astonished Benny, even though he was pretty used to violence, the way I used to attack, torture and kill monsters shocked him. I thought he was afraid this would have been his fate. But I was slowly starting to trust him like I used to trust my friends, I knew why he was desperately trying to get out from that place, I didn’t know what, but I knew there was something really important to him on Earth. I was curious to know his story, but he never talked a lot about the time he was alive.

_“So it’s true, what they say ‘bout you,” Benny said immediately after I had cut off a shapeshifter’s head._

_“What?” I picked up my blade, cleaning it from the monster’s blood._

_“Dean Winchester, the best hunter on Earth.” I snorted, hearing those words but I let a smile slip away._

_“That’s not true, I know lot of hunters that are as good as me, maybe even better.” I was thinking about my brother, he was a great hunter too, then Jody, good old Bobby, Ellen, Jo, Ash, they were all great hunters, I wouldn’t have won lot of battles if they hadn’t been by my side. Garth was a great hunter too, maybe a little bit crazy, but skillful. They all did their job in the best way they could, they all were good._

_“Monsters here only talk about you and your brother, especially after the Apocalypse.”_

_“Didn’t know you little monsters liked to gossip like in one of Doctor Sexy MD’s episodes.”_

_“What is Doctor Sexy MD?”_   
_“Emh.. well…” I nodded my head. “We should go, we don’t have time to waste.”_

Benny really didn’t like to talk about his past and I respected his choice, moreover, I wasn’t comfortable talking about my past too, even if, day by day, I slowly started telling him about some hunts I went on with my brother and some funny jokes about my family, but never anything too personal. 

Benny had a strange habit: to draw a monster’s attention he used to whistle “In the hall of the mountain king”, this melody annoyed monsters so he kept whistling until we had knocked them out for tortures, trying to find out at least something about Castiel’s health and whereabouts.

Even though my days in Purgatory were stressful, Benny helped me to make them more tolerable. In him I found someone to talk to, to share this experience with, someone that took care of me in those difficult moments. I realised Benny had a good heart. Maybe what Sam had been saying for years was true: not all monsters were evil, some of them managed not to be just monsters, they found humanity inside themselves and Benny was one of them. Benny taught me to respect him. And we kept hunting, killing and torturing until I thought I was becoming the real monster. But I had to find my angel.

_“Cas, I’m near. In a day I’ll be with you, I promise, I’m coming.” That night my prayer ended with these words. When I finished, I was already back on my way, but Benny laid his hand on my shoulder._

_“Dean. We should rest. We’ve been walkin’ for thirty hours, you have barely eaten anything.”_

_“We’re almost there, I’m not going to rest now.”_

_“Once we find the angel, we have to get to the portal and it’s not goin’ to be easy. Lot of leviathans monitor the portal, you have to be well-rested. We might not make it, or at least, not all of us.” I stopped walking, looking at Benny._

_“What do you mean?”_

_“Only humans can walk through the portal, I’ll make it stayin’ inside you but what about Castiel? He’s not a human.” Benny seemed like he was worried about my reaction at his words, he had seen my worst, so he knew what I was capable of. But, to his surprise, I reacted differently._

_“No, there’s gonna be a way, there always is another way. We’ll make it out, all of us.”_

_I think I’ve never had the hope I had at that time in my entire life. Getting out of Purgatory with Castiel was really important for me, no matter on what conditions._

_“I don’t know, Dean, I want you to be aware of the possibility of him not makin’ it out.”_

_“We must make it out, I won’t leave without him.”_   
_I could see a spark of anger inside Benny’s eyes, he had to come back to Earth, I didn’t know what for, but he was clear it was really important to him._

_The night before we found Castiel we sat facing each other, talking about how weird our friendship was: a hunter and a vampire fighting together for the same purpose. I talked with him as I ever had only with Sam and Cas: I told him about my father, my mother and my childhood. I truly needed a real friend, someone to rely on, and he was in front of me in that moment. He told me about his death, about his desire of revenge on a man who took everything away from him. I had to get them out of there: Castiel and Benny, both of them_.

Once I got back on Earth I found out a lot about Benny: I learnt about this woman he had loved his entire life, her name was Andrea and she was Greek. They tried to escape from their pack, but the alpha stopped them. Benny had been killed by his alpha, he cut his head off because he was a traitor. Benny just wanted to make his dreams come true.

I discovered why he liked that melody so much: it was the story of a man, Peer Gynt, who loved a woman whom he couldn’t marry. So, one day, they ran away together, looking for a place to live in the mountains, but he got captured by trolls who took him at their king’s place. Peer tried to escape, he tried so hard, but at the end the King killed him. The story wasn’t about Peer and his love for a girl he couldn’t marry, the story was about Benny, Andrea and their forbidden love. I understood why this melody was so important for him.

But I had never been a good friend to him. It was my fault if he went back to purgatory several months after. Benny had always considered Purgatory a pure place, I’ve never really understood what that meant. In Purgatory creatures can be free in the wilderness of the wood. They can let their basic instincts dominate. They can be pure, uncontaminated by the sin of the civilisation.

* * *

“You should stop blaming yourself.” Cas’ voice interrupted that moment of silence. I opened my eyes. The angel was next to me with concern in his eyes. “The blame is on the person who killed him, Dean, not on you.” 

I didn’t ask how he found out what I was thinking about. He was Castiel: he had always understood everything about me with only one look at my face, my expression, into my eyes. He knew me so well.

“He was a good friend,” I whispered, looking into Cas’ eyes.

“That’s why you shouldn’t blame yourself, he wouldn’t want you to do so, he’d never blame you for his death, never. I remember how much he cared about you, you’re so lucky to have met him in that horrible place.” His voice was comforting.

I smiled. “I’m glad you’re back.”  
Castiel smiled too.

“I’m going back to sleep.”  
He nodded, I stood up and left the room.

When I got to bed, one last memory came back to my mind.

_I was sat, my hands under my knees. Benny was in front of me, he was sat too. Sun was ready to set, it had been a long day in Purgatory. Castiel was looking around for monsters to avoid being attacked during the night._

_“It’s nice that you care ‘bout the angel,” Benny said, playing with a little stone next to his left foot._

_“Cas and my brother are my family, of course I care about him.”_

_“You know, Dean, when I was alive I didn’t have a lotta friends, I was alone, especially in the last months. I can see how strong your relationship with Castiel is.”_

_“Apparently a vampire’s life is similar to a hunter’s one.” I giggled. “Thanks”_

_“For what?”_

_“For being my best friend in these months.”_

_Benny smiled. “Well, thanks to you for bein’ someone to rely on. You’re really the best hunter I’ve ever met.”_

_“Luckily you’ve never met me when you were alive.”_

_Benny and I burst out laughing, in the distance Castiel was coming back to us. The vampire looked at him for few seconds._

_“By the way, I think you shoulda tell him.” He said, looking into my eyes._

_“Tell what?” I asked._

_He just smiled. “When the moment comes, you’ll understand what I’m talkin’ about.”_

He knew. He knew something I kept buried deep inside my soul. Benny was really a good friend, he could see into my soul, he would have fought for me, and he did, until the very end.

I turned the radio on, putting in a tape I had kept inside my drawer for a long time.

In the hall of the mountain king.

I chose to remember him as the warrior who loved to whistle this melody to remind himself about the woman he had loved his entire life.

I chose to remember him as the hero he was.

I laid on my bed.

The song ended but the melody lingered on.

In my memories.

A tear slid down my cheek.

“Goodbye, my friend.”


End file.
